Daughter's New House Bad Cabling

[coxhaus]

I just looked over my daughter's new house a brand new track house. The house was wired with CAT5e cable. All the new neighborhoods cabled by AT&T are with fiber which is a good thing. The problem is the CAT5e cable in my daughter's house is installed for copper phones terminated with RJ11 jacks and all strung to an outside point where an AT&T phone box goes. There is no copper in new neighborhoods. The phone company will not put a box over it so it will need to be dealt with.

So now I need to modify the new cable. It looks like all the cable passes over a utility room going outside. The utility room has a high shelf a couple of feet down which would make a good network shelf. So the plan is cut the CAT5e cables in the attic and use a punch down panel. The idea is to run 7 patch cables down through the sheet rock roof to the shelf. This will be the distribution point for all the jacks in the house. All the RJ11 jacks need to be replaced with RJ45 jacks. Wireless will be handled by one or two wireless APs. To be determined.

My daughter wants to run a fax machine. I guess if she gets a VOIP line we can connect the back of the modem VOIP line to a RJ45 plug to feed her a fax line and phone.

Can you think of anything I missed or should add?

 

[PolarBear]

It sounds like a good plan. Does the fibre come into the house in the utility room or nearby ?

Will the utility room have high heat / humidity ? (Washing machine / tumbler dryer etc.) I'm not sure how sensitive the electronics will be to steamy environmental conditions.

Utility rooms are often used for storing lots of stuff (at least, ours is!) so it might be that stuff will get piled on top of the electronic gear unless somehow this is made physically impossible. In our household, I know I could tell everyone many times not to do this, but somehow it would just happen ....

 

[degrub]

It sounds like a good plan. Does the fibre come into the house in the utility room or nearby ?

Will the utility room have high heat / humidity ? (Washing machine / tumbler dryer etc.) I'm not sure how sensitive the electronics will be to steamy environmental conditions.

Utility rooms are often used for storing lots of stuff (at least, ours is!) so it might be that stuff will get piled on top of the electronic gear unless somehow this is made physically impossible. In our household, I know I could tell everyone many times not to do this, but somehow it would just happen ....

Utility rooms with motors do not mix well with electronics unless they are well sheilded and the shields properly grounded. Motor starting circuits broadcast on all frequencies, so if you see dropouts, it is a likely suspect.

 

[degrub]

It sounds like a good plan. Does the fibre come into the house in the utility room or nearby ?

Will the utility room have high heat / humidity ? (Washing machine / tumbler dryer etc.) I'm not sure how sensitive the electronics will be to steamy environmental conditions.

Utility rooms are often used for storing lots of stuff (at least, ours is!) so it might be that stuff will get piled on top of the electronic gear unless somehow this is made physically impossible. In our household, I know I could tell everyone many times not to do this, but somehow it would just happen ....

Utility rooms with motors do not mix well with electronics unless they are well sheilded and the shields properly grounded. Motor starting circuits broadcast on all frequencies, so if you see dropouts, it is a likely suspect.

 

[KenZ71]

I send 2 or 3 faxes a year over my MagicJack line. Works well.

Would think fax could be done via Internet but haven't found a way.

Before going too far I would say replace a couple RJ11 jacks and test to verify the lines are direct runs, no splicing.

 

[coxhaus]

I have 6 outside wires and 6 inside jacks. So the lines look like they home run but I better check.

Yes the utility room does have the washer dryer in there. Hopefully they will not cause too many problems as it is centrally heated and cooled. It is located under a vaulted roof so the shelf is pretty high out of the way. Power wise we are going to add a plug up high by the shelf. It will be easy as we don't have to fish the wire through the wall. The washer dryer now days seem to have dedicated circuits. Even the 120 volt washer. There is only one plug. The way the wire is located I don't think I have any choice to locate anywhere else without restringing the wire.

Internet fax would be nice if it really worked. It would save a monthly bill. My daughter is going to use it in her business so it needs to work.

 

[L&LD]

I have 6 outside wires and 6 inside jacks. So the lines look like they home run but I better check.

Yes the utility room does have the washer dryer in there. Hopefully they will not cause too many problems as it is centrally heated and cooled. It is located under a vaulted roof so the shelf is pretty high out of the way. Power wise we are going to add a plug up high by the shelf. It will be easy as we don't have to fish the wire through the wall. The washer dryer now days seem to have dedicated circuits. Even the 120 volt washer. There is only one plug. The way the wire is located I don't think I have any choice to locate anywhere else without restringing the wire.

Internet fax would be nice if it really worked. It would save a monthly bill. My daughter is going to use it in her business so it needs to work.

https://faxzero.com/

 

[coxhaus]

It looks good for occasional faxes. But for her work it would cost a lot per month. She is in real estate and does lots of faxing.

 

[L&LD]

It looks good for occasional faxes. But for her work it would cost a lot per month. She is in real estate and does lots of faxing.

Curious what the hard costs are for her per month? (Telephone line and fax machine / supplies).

I can't believe it will be more cost and time effective than something like the service below?

https://www.efax.ca/pricing

And it would be deductible as a business expense anyway?

 

[coxhaus]

The printing costs is the same which ever way you do it. You still have to print the faxes from eFax.

She would end up paying $2.00 per fax. A VOIP line only costs $10 to $20 a month.

 

[coxhaus]

I guess the one question is does a fax work across an AT&T VOIP line? I had some trouble getting my ADT security sytem to work with a VOIP line. I had both AT&T and ADT show up at the same time as they were each pointing the finger at each other. It finally worked.

 

[L&LD]

I guess the one question is does a fax work across an AT&T VOIP line? I had some trouble getting my ADT security sytem to work with a VOIP line. I had both AT&T and ADT show up at the same time as they were each pointing the finger at each other. It finally worked.

Oh? Where did the finger pointing stop?

 

[abailey]

You could just use an OBi200 (or 202) with something like Google Voice. Then there is no monthly charge. We use it at our house for our home phone and fax.

 

[CaptainSTX]

I have never had much success in sending a FAX using a VOIP line. Would work occasionally, but it always seemed that with a multiple page FAX it would fail eventually.

Finally gave up trying and now I scan everything into a PDF file and send it as an e-mail attachment.

 

[sfx2000]

I have never had much success in sending a FAX using a VOIP line. Would work occasionally, but it always seemed that with a multiple page FAX it would fail eventually.

Finally gave up trying and now I scan everything into a PDF file and send it as an e-mail attachment.

Analog Fax is really hard with VOIP pads... Phase D transitions (end of page) on the receive side were the worst, as the additional latency would cause it to time out...

 

[wis]

vonage claims (I only have a Vonage VOIP line, no direct experience):

Dedicated Fax Line

Add a dedicated VoIP fax line to your Vonage service and free up your home phone.


Features

• Use any fax-capable machine to send and receive faxes.
• 250 minutes of outgoing fax service, plus unlimited¹ incoming faxes.
• $9.99 a month (plus taxes and fees).
• Send faxes abroad at a low, international rate.

where "Unlimted calling is based on normal residential, non-commercial use."

I'd say just get an analog line and be done with it - but you'll need to pull a separate pair to the location - or go with 100 MB/s Ethernet to that location.

 

[coxhaus]

It was an under taking to fix the wiring. The cabling company's price whom originally wired the house wrong was too high to fix it. Their answer was they wired it to spec but they should have know better since it is their main job. AT&T ended up taking care of everything. We had a fiber guy out which was able to make the fiber work but he was not an inside wiring guy. So we had to reschedule to get an inside wiring guy to fix all the CAT5e wire and plugs. AT&T does not do patch panels but we terminated all drops in the garage high on a shelve. I think this is a good thing for AT&T to do. They are going to make money over the next few years selling internet and TV service.

The fax has not been dealt with other than AT&T VOIP was installed with a phone for my granddaughter. My daughter is still using her office for faxing.

 

[System Error Message]

You dont need a seperate fax line anymore as you could do it through VOIP or using an internet address instead. Even windows since the early days had fax functionality included so you can use the computer as a fax machine. Nowadays you can use an SIP gateway and a real phone number (like google's phone service since you wont be using it to call emergencies) though instead of paying for a line. Some SIP gateways are free.

However for phone its actually good to have a seperate phone line (or using VOIP through modem to ISP) as long as it doesnt go through the router as not all routers have 24/7 uptime reliability.

Some modems can tell you how good the signal quality is.

 

[LoneWolf]

Glad you got it fixed.

The only suggestion I'd have made is to see if anything should be done for grounding (to reduce the risk of damage to equipment from lightning/surge on those lines) and that you might wish for some battery backup if you're using any equipment that needs temporary function during a power outage (easily resolved).